Sermons for the Month
Five Weeks of Joy (1)
DATE: October 17, 1999
SERVICE: Pentecost XXI
TEXT: Philippians 1:1-11“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN This morning and continuing for the next five weeks, I am going to change our pace a little by looking at one of the most exhilarating books in the New Testament, the letter on which our designated readings for the last few weeks have been focusing -- the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians. I would encourage you to read this little letter sometime these next few weeks as we are going to spend some time with it, as time permits. For the next few weeks I am going to switch from presenting a sermon to sharing a Bible study. As with a lot of books one reads these days, there is a lot more in Philippians than meets the eye. At first glance, it seems to be little more than an informal and somewhat meandering conversation between old friends -- "Thanks for the gifts. Aren't you glad Epaphrodictus got better? Oh, by the way our mutual friend Timothy will be coming to see you. And did you know what has happened since I've been in prison? A lot of really unexpected people have become Christians--palace guards no less. And people from Caesar's own staff. Would you believe it! And this with all those folks who are out there trying to make reputations for themselves as preachers at my expense while I'm stuck here in prison. But it's okay. Our gospel is so big and so powerful, it doesn't matter who tells it. If the word gets out, good results will follow. And what a Person we follow. Can you believe it! He had it all -- the jewels of heaven -- and he gave it up for us. Would that we could all be that humble and serving. Speaking of which, you two ladies have got to stop fighting. We need you both. The church needs you. The gospel needs you. I need you. But let me tell you whom nobody needs -- those jerks that are trying to get you all bound up again in rules and regulations. 'Do this. Do that.' Or 'God's not gonna like you.' Don't you believe it? Keep us all the good things you got going for you. That's quite a prize out there. So I gotta go now. I'll come see ya, once I get out of this joint. And, thanks again for the gift. I needed that. And, by the way, rejoice. You hear that? Rejoice. There is a lotta of joy out there. You just gotta see it. Cia." So is Philippians merely a conversation between old friends, a chat of little substance? As our pseudo-Paul would say, "Don't you believe it." Philippians may look like a chatty little letter, but it's a chat filled with dynamite. There is great stuff here, but we need to have eyes to see it. We need to look beyond its casualness and seeming, "Off the Cuff" quality. We've got to see into Paul's heart, into what he really wants for those beloved friends, into his vision of what the gospel is all about, into his life circumstances when he wrote. There are great themes here, which is why Philippians is a favorite of so many Christians: life and death, victory over suffering, joy in the face of trauma, humility as the model for life. We need to look carefully lest we miss all this. So lets start with the first eleven verses this morning, the introduction. Philippians is a book that we as 20th century American churchgoers both like and mistrust. We like it because its note of joy strikes a chord within us. We want joy. We never get enough joy. Anything that can tell us how to find joy we listen to. But we also mistrust Philippians. We mistrust it because Paul doesn't tell us how to get rid of pain and problems. As a result, we can't imagine how he can teach us anything about joy because in our minds, joy is what comes when our problems go away. I think that for a lot of us, this is exactly what we assume joy is: the absence of the negative. When things are going our way, then we have joy. When they are not, well, joy isn't possible--or so we imagine. But in fact, this is not how joy is understood in the New Testament. In the Bible joy is a much stronger word than the "the lack of problems." It connotes the presence of something important, not just the absence of what we don't like. Otherwise Paul could never write as he does here. Let's think first about Paul's situation as he writes this letter. He is in prison. To be incarcerated is never pleasant. But for a man as active and as driven as Paul, it must have been hell. There was so much he wanted to do. There were so many people who had not heard the gospel. And yet all he could do was wait, being confined to one small space. And then there was the anxiety. While he had high hopes of being released, this was by no means a certainty. He could just as well remain in jail for years or sentenced to death. He is obviously thinking about death as it becomes clear in the first chapter. And there was the physical problem. Paul does not say much about this. But reading between the lines here and in others of his letters, it seems likely that he was not a well man. He refers often to a "thorn in his flesh." Whatever this is, chances are it had a physical component. Prison life is never good for one physically, but especially not if you are already unwell when you enter it. There must have been a fair amount of discomfort for Paul. And then there was prison life in general: deprived of exercise, bad food, comfort lacking, freedom gone. All in all, being in jail is no fun. In the face of this situation, what kind of attitude would you have? What would be the tone of a letter you wrote from jail? I doubt it would be too upbeat. But, as you will know, this is not a gloomy letter. Quite the contrary. What Paul expresses in his letter to the Philippians is joy -- abundant, uncontainable, over-flowing joy. Not only is he joyful, but he counsels the Philippians also to be joyful -- even though their situation likewise leaves a lot to be desired. This is a church that at that moment had big problems. For one thing, it was not unified. Apparently two key women in the church were at each other's throats and this was causing real problems. Macedonian women were not to be trifled with as will become evident in the course of these next few weeks. And if this was not enough, the church was also being forced to deal with false teachers whose wrong-headed ideas was highly destructive to the growth of the church. They kept shouting "tradition, tradition, tradition." This is a church pressed from within and pressed from without and yet Paul says to it: "Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, 'Rejoice'!" Given his circumstances and theirs, how in the world can he say, "Rejoice, people, rejoice?" This is what we will want to figure out over the course of these next few weeks. Why? Because I think all of us would like to know how we can flourish in the middle of adversity. In Philippians we have a rare opportunity. In Philippians we have the chance to study a man under stress. And not just any ordinary man, as you know. This is Paul, the apostle of our Lord. This is Paul at the end of his life. This is Paul, the fiery Pharisee who had been transformed literally into a 'new creation.' This is Paul who reflects how Christianity expresses itself in the real world. In other words, if we look carefully at Philippians we will discover how it is that Christianity works. Now, a word about structure, that is, about how Paul composed this letter. I don't think that Paul sat down and did what our sixth grade English teachers told us to do, that is, make an outline and then use it to write the essay. He just wrote. One idea suggested another idea, and so the letter unfolded itself. This is not to say that Philippians does not have a coherent structure. It does. Paul's mind is such that it naturally puts things together in meaningful ways. The problem is that his implicit structure is not always evident to the casual reader. We have to work with a passage for awhile until in reveals how it is put together. All this is to say that in these first eleven verses, there is structure. Paul's thoughts can be outlined. The first thing to note is that the format of a Greek letter provides the focus for what Paul says in these verses. After his opening "how-de-dos", it is typical for a Greek letter to offer a prayer in honor of the recipients of the letter. This is what Paul does here. He offers thanks to God for what good friends and colleagues the Philippians have been. As he says this, he gets in touch with all the affection he has for them. So he tells them how much he cares for them. His affection, in turn leads to prayer. How else could he express such feelings sitting there in prison, far away from all of them? So he tells them what he is praying and thus these opening verses. 3 I thank my God every time I remember you, 4 constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, 5 because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart,* for all of you share in God's grace* with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. Do you see the progression? Thanks leads to affection which leads to prayer. There is a coherent flow here. Good advice for us. In our relationships don't we often do the opposite, start off thinking about whatever is deficient: how she doesn't love me as much, how he seems to always put me second to his toys, how they never answer when called. Instead of thanks for the relationship, we think what a thankless relationship it is which leads to anger and which leads to uncaring. This is what we must be searching for constantly in all Bible study: the flow of the author's thoughts so we might juxtapose them against how we often think and act and so learn to make whatever changes necessary to the glory of God. But there is something else happening here at the same time. What we have been talking about so far is the surface stuff--Paul's thoughts moving from thanks to affection to prayer. But beneath this movement of thought there is in Paul's mind an image of the Philippians: who they are, what his relationship to them is, and where they are in their Christian life. And it is this image of the people to whom he is writing that governs what he says by way of thanks, affection, and prayer. Who are they Philippians and where are they in their Christian life? How are they bound to Paul and why? What are their needs? In other words, why does Paul write as he does here in these opening eleven verses? It is by probing at this level we get some of the best insights into what Paul is trying to express. This is what I want to quickly finish up this morning with. Koinonia: This is a familiar word to most of us--one of the few Greek words we know. Paul uses this word twice in this passage verses 5 and 7. In both they are translated 'share.' This is a good translation: sharing together in a common venture. By this word Paul refers to the fact that the Philippians have been consistent and faithful supporters of his ministry, often sending financial gifts to him, and assisting him in a variety of ways. So a church's real fellowship involves more than just going to a worship service. In involves a partnership in a common vision that has kingdom value. Thankfulness: This kind of sharing, in good times and bad, brings with it a sense of thankfulness for others. Thankfulness is the first fruit of fellowship. Paul needed the Philippians and they needed him. They were grateful for each other. True fellowship, therefore, brings mutual gratitude. If there is no sense of how much we need others, then the depth of our fellowship is suspect. Affection: Another fruit of fellowship is affection. Paul really likes these folks. They are not just anonymous donors who get his newsletter each month. He cares about them. He wants to be with them. And he tells them so. The affection he feels for them is connected to the affection that Christ has for all his children. True fellowship brings love for others which issues in warm feelings and the active bearing of each other's burdens. Insight: A Fourth fruit of fellowship is insight. We come to know the real needs of those we are in fellowship with. We thus understand how to pray for them. Notice how specific Paul's prayer for the Philippians is. He knows their situation and their need. Paul's main wish for them is that they will grow in love. The do love, but they need to grow more in love. Only in that way will they overcome the crises of unity they are experiencing. But this is not uninformed love they need. They are facing not only disunity but false teachers who seek to draw them away from basic Christianity. And you need to know that we are not talking about non-Christians but people who called themselves Christian. "You got to be practical; you got to follow the constitution; you got to do it the way we've always done it," they say. Paul instead tells the Philippians, they must be able to discern what will lead to wholeness--which Paul defines here as purity, blamelessness and goodness. In other words true fellowship results in accurate insight into the needs each has. Paul prays for their needs at the moment, confident that God will supply the discerning love that is vital to them. 'Partnership' involves mutual prayer for and support of one another. In summary, we have here in these first eleven verses, a picture of what the ideal Christian community is all about. This should serve as a model for what our church ought to look like and as a vision for what we want our group to become: a place of koinonia, thankfulness, affection and insight into the future. Verses 12-26, Chapter 1 next week. AMEN